Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the answer to that question is straightforward. The major obligation on the Monetary Policy Committee is clearly detailed in the Bank of England Act, and the Chancellor's remit stays scrupulously close to that. The committee has a major objective on inflation. That does not alter the fact that it is all too well aware that its deliberations and decisions have an impact on the wider macro-economy. The Chancellor and others point out to it the necessity of taking the issue in the round—and that is broadly what my noble friends succeeding in doing with their two contrasting but exceedingly helpful questions.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I cannot give the precise number. Literally thousands of scientists were involved in putting together this report. I understand that some 600 key scientists were involved over the years 2001 to 2007, which is the period between the third and fourth report, but with several thousand more peer reviewing the work of those scientists to come to the unanimous report that was produced. I cannot say how many of those were British, but there is a contribution from this country.
	As for the international action, we are required under the international agreements—the Kyoto agreement and others—to produce a climate change programme, which we did last March. There are ongoing discussions around the world at various times. This is a further scientific assessment of where we have got to, in some ways complementing the Stern report, which concentrated more on the economics.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Lord himself was present at a counter-report by the Fraser Institute which, according to Wikipedia, is a reactionary conservative think-tank based in Canada. That report, published yesterday, which the noble Lord endorsed misrepresents the international panel's conclusions, selectively quotes from the report and distorts the evidence by presenting it out of context without any recognition whatever of the full breadth of the analysis. I can give examples to back up every one of those assertions if required.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, indeed we are, and an awful lot of work is being done by CEFAS, the laboratory agency of Defra, on rising sea levels to know where to place defences so that they can be effective. It is not necessarily the case that all sea defences can be effective. There is evidence in the report published last week showing potential rises in sea levels that are going to cause catastrophic problems for people around the world. Those problems are not just for one government to deal with; they are intergovernmental. There will clearly have to be sea defences as well as organised movements of population.

Lord Grocott: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will imminently repeat a Statement on the White Paper. For this Statement only—this is without precedent—the usual channels have agreed that the noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, should have the opportunity to speak within the initial 20-minute period set aside for the Front Benches, along with the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally. As usual, there will then be another 20 minutes for noble Lords from all sides of the House to put questions. As far as I can judge, there are no losers there.
	I remind the House that the Companion makes it clear that the 20-minute question period should be for questions. Obviously, the shorter the questions are kept, the longer the answers will be. I reassure the House that we shall no doubt find time to return to this subject.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, on the first point, it was the unanimous view of the parliamentarians who met and discussed the matter that the Bishops should stay. As the right reverend Prelate rightly says, there needs to be further discussion of the number and selection of the Prelates who stay. We envisage that occurring after the votes have been cast in both Chambers.
	The inclusion of representatives from other faith communities must be discussed with the Appointments Commission. Plainly, if it becomes a statutory commission, legislation, could be significant in determining how that would happen.
	I am very attracted to the idea of continuous assessment. Can you fail continuous assessment after a while?

Lord Dubs: Tell us again, my Lords.

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the second report from the Select Committee be agreed to (HL Paper 25).—(The Chairman of Committees.)

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, the Government clearly have a duty to protect the British public from those who do their utmost to encourage serious organised crime and to profit from it, while taking great care to stay at arm's length from the crimes themselves. They are a danger to all of us, but their hands never appear dirty in public. I recognise that it is very difficult to take measures to protect the public from such people, but it is vital that we do so. However, those methods must be both proportionate and effective without undermining our system of law and justice. If the new system does not work, it is the "Mr Big"s who will have the last laugh—again.
	Today we have before us the supreme irony of a Bill that creates a cross between ASBOs and control orders, at the very time when the effectiveness of both measures has come in for so much criticism. Control orders have been dogged with problems. Just last month a third terrorist suspect went on the run. That must raise serious doubts about the effectiveness of introducing a similar scheme for gangsters; and if up to 55 per cent of tearaways breach ASBOs, what makes the Home Secretary think that hardened, calculating criminals of the most dangerous kind will pay attention to one?
	We are sceptical about whether measures such as the new serious crime prevention orders are the most effective way of combating serious crime. Less than two years after the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 was enacted, the Government would be well advised to answer our call to improve criminal evidence rules first; for example, by allowing evidence obtained through the use of phone tapping and other electronic surveillance to be admissible in court, so that more serious criminals can be charged and convicted. After all, the best weapon against serious criminals is to track them down, charge them and prosecute them.
	However, the Home Office appears to be in denial, or, according to the Home Secretary last month, in wallpaper-stripping mode. He seems to see himself as Bob the Builder. In reality, he looks as though he is auditioning for the BBC's "DIY SOS". However, we must consider the Bill before us seriously. Of course it is right to do everything within reason to prosecute and punish those guilty of serious crime.
	However, Part 1 gives sweeping powers to judges to impose super-ASBOs—which, I understand, the Home Office is colloquially calling "GASBOS"—on the basis of the civil burden of proof, the balance of probabilities. We shall need to examine the potential consequences of that. The Minister sought to reassure us today by saying that there would be a sliding scale of testing against the balance of probabilities, but in court and in the statute one wants clarity.
	How easy will it be to apply for an order to be made? The Explanatory Notes state that there will be tight control over the process by the DPP, but Schedule 2(2)(1) does not seem to provide that. We shall consider whether that needs tightening up, because, despite what the noble Baroness said, there remains widespread concern that it could prove too tempting for the police to go for an order instead of bringing a prosecution in the criminal court, where perhaps they may think they have an underwhelming case. The noble Baroness said that that was not the intent. We will have to ensure in our scrutiny of the Bill that her assurance becomes a reality.
	We shall need to examine whether there is sufficient protection in the Bill for those engaged in legitimate business, whether the prohibitions proposed by the orders are likely to be appropriate and effective, and what the costs may be.
	I am puzzled by the Government's definition of "serious crime" in Schedule 1. Why have they listed fishing for salmon with a prohibited instrument as a serious crime but left off something as serious as armed robbery? What is the rationale for that? Is it right that the list of serious crimes can be extended any day in court by a judge? Surely transparency and legal certainty are best served by extending the list of serious crimes by statutory instrument following parliamentary scrutiny.
	Super-ASBOs have grabbed the headlines, such as there have been in the press, but we must not ignore the important provisions of Parts 2 and 3 in our scrutiny of the Bill. As the noble Baroness said, Part 2 is based firmly and squarely on work done by the Law Commission. I join her in commending the commission, as I always do, on its excellent work on these matters. In Committee, we should simply like to examine how the Government's proposals diverge from the original Law Commission proposals so that the Government have the opportunity to put on the record how their thinking developed. Certainly, at first blush it appeared from the Bill that the Government had taken the more appropriate and reasonable of those proposals and that they were leaving until a later date those that might need more testing in pilot schemes or more research. However, we will need to look at that in some detail.
	I turn to Part 3. Of course it is important that we should make the best use of modern data systems to detect and prevent fraud. As the Minister said, it is what the public expect and have a right to expect, but the methods adopted must be not only effective but proportionate. The Audit Commission's National Fraud Initiative has been a valuable exercise, but in Part 3 we see sweeping changes to our data protection laws that will need very careful consideration. Extensive powers are being seized by the Home Secretary that could allow, for the first time, widespread data-sharing between the public and private sectors in the name of tackling fraud. It will overturn the basic data protection principle that personal information provided to a government department for one purpose should not, in general, be used for another. Instead, the principle will now be that information will normally be shared in the public sector provided that it is in the public interest.
	The Bill clears the way for data-matching exercises to be carried out on a large scale, even though a Home Office consultation paper last year acknowledged that many public bodies feared that such operations could be seen as fishing expeditions, which should be justified only on a crime-by-crime basis. But, of course, the Bill could open the way for operations under which software was used to search several databases to identify suspicious patterns of activity that simply could not be spotted when the data were seen individually.
	Today the Minister assures us that this is intended to be a narrow gateway, very carefully policed and underwritten by guarantees. We shall need to examine that assurance to see whether it is borne out by the reality of the drafting. For example, I am concerned about new Section 32G under Schedule 6, which gives the Home Secretary the power to add to the purposes for which data-matching exercises can be carried out. Presumably, in the future that could include sensitive personal data, so I should like to look at that fairly closely in Committee.
	The Explanatory Notes make it clear that, in the longer term, the National Fraud Initiative, in which 1,300 public bodies take part, will be extended to include information on central government systems, such as passports and driving licences. It has been suggested by some respondents on the Bill that it would not be the right way forward if that power were used to pave the way for a national identity register. It would certainly appear to contravene the assurances given to this House during the passage of the Identity Cards Bill.
	We need to look carefully at Part 3, but of course I understand that we will need to ensure that the appropriate codes of practice and guidelines are in place. The noble Baroness said today, "Don't worry. The Data Protection Act covers everything", but the advice I have been given is that, although some of the new measures must comply with existing data protection codes of practice, some of the new powers are not subject to specific codes or guidelines, and I shall need to look at that. The noble Baroness shakes her head but we will need clarification on that point in Committee.
	The Minister talked about the part of the Bill whereby the Assets Recovery Agency has its demise. It has now merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which could be a measure of common sense. However, it is important that the costs of recovering assets, together with the amount recovered, are still published. It is a matter of public knowledge; we need it in the public domain. We must monitor the effectiveness of the process. The ARA has gone after small, more readily accessible amounts; at least its procedures were relatively transparent. What will be the impact of the transfer to SOCA, whose approach one might call quasi-secret? What accountability will there be to Parliament? SOCA has repeatedly made it clear that it quite properly, according to its rationale, concentrates on level 3 crime: organised gangs operating nationally and across borders.
	There are fears that the merger could mean a narrowing of focus. My noble friend Lord Glentoran will table an amendment in Committee to debate the particular and significant concerns raised with us by the Police Service of Northern Ireland; I understand that it has approached other noble Lords on the same matter. It is worried that there will be a reduction in the focus on Northern Ireland, with a risk, for example, that the intimidation of neighbourhoods and persistence of protection rackets in sectors of the local economy will simply not appear high enough on any scale of SOCA priorities set in London. I am the first to recognise that, in general, SOCA's more intelligence-led approach could offer a solid fit with asset recovery. SOCA has made it clear that it wants the hunt for criminal profits to be central to how it operates. That can only be good news. What we need from this merger is synergy, not a culture clash.
	In conclusion, it is obvious that serious organised crime causes human misery and massive costs to society. There is nothing between all of us on that. The principles to be debated in this Bill are significant. Do they take us too far in the development of preventative orders and data-sharing? Are they necessary in the fight against serious organised crime or are there other, more effective, measures that we should be adopting? All those matters deserve cautious and careful consideration, and we look forward to giving them that attention in what I am sure will be a rather intriguing Committee.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, back in 1760, Sir Francis Bernard, the governor of Massachusetts—then a British colony—adopted the practice of issuing writs of assistance. Their effect was that any place could be searched at the whim of the holder, and the searchers were not responsible for any damage they caused. The constant use of these writs of assistance proved such a burden to the colonists that they seriously considered their relationship with Britain. After one or two skirmishes around Boston, including the Boston Tea Party, the American revolutionary war broke out and America consequently became independent.
	Following the defeat of the British forces at Yorktown, Lord North, the Prime Minister responsible for this fiasco, was defeated in a vote of confidence in Parliament and resigned in March 1782. He is famously said to have cried, "Oh God, it's all over, it's all over"; the parallels with the present are obvious. As a result of that, the fourth amendment to the American constitution, a significant part of their Bill of Rights, outlawed general search warrants and specified that judicially sanctioned search and arrest warrants must be supported by probable cause and be limited in scope, according to specific information provided by a person, usually a peace officer, who has sworn by it and is therefore accountable for it to the issuing court.
	So what an excellent wheeze Part 3 of this atrocious Bill is. It introduces into our law a high-tech version of the writ of assistance. If the Bill goes through, the Audit Commission, whose job we thought was to concern itself with the efficient and effective delivery of public services, will appear in a new guise as spymaster general. Nothing could more appropriate for this Government, with their authoritarian bent. New powers are to be given to the Audit Commission to obtain,
	"such data ... as the Commission ... may reasonably require for the purpose of conducting data matching exercises".
	That is data from public bodies subject to audits, such as police forces, emergency services, local authorities, NHS trusts and so on; and from any other bodies that voluntarily supply databases at the commission's request.
	Data matching—the focus of Part 3—is otherwise known as data mining. It is a process whereby large quantities of information about many individuals are gathered from many sources and are mined by mass cross-referencing in order to throw up patterns of behaviour. It is the sort of thing that the supermarket card is designed to do to demonstrate to the management whether a customer buys buy tins of salmon or jars of Marmite. The patterns of behaviour thrown up by the data matching in Part 3 may or may not be meaningful; it is all a matter of chance. Depending on how they are interpreted, the Audit Commission will be able to point the finger at what is deemed to be a suspicious constellation of characteristics or behaviours in an individual. Instead of a system in which a person is suspected of a crime and is then investigated by the police, a trawl using the latest computer techniques will throw up names and those people will be investigated because of their characteristics or behaviours. Suddenly, we have grounds for a serious crime prevention order under Part 1.
	That is why I call it a modern day writ of assistance. It is not necessary for there to be evidence of wrongdoing, a probable cause or a warrant based on reasonable suspicion, nor is there the accountability of having to go to a magistrate to get a warrant. It is no wonder that in her letter yesterday to the Constitution Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that the orders are not aimed at the one-off criminal but at those who conduct their lives and affairs in a criminal way; in other words, who may be thrown up by data-matching or data-mining.
	This is the Serious Crime Bill, but when it comes to data sharing—the other limb of Part 3—the illustrations that the noble Baroness gave related to benefit fraud, housing benefit and matters of that sort. The Data Protection Act is given lip service in the Bill and is then circumvented. The Bill provides that a specified anti-fraud organisation, which is any unincorporated association, body corporate or other person which has as one of its purposes the enabling or facilitating of any sharing of information to prevent fraud—and we were told there are 250 of them—may require a public authority, for the purposes of preventing fraud, to disclose information of any kind about an individual, including sensitive personal information, either to itself or to any other person in accordance with any arrangement it may chose to make. Confidentiality is overridden, the Data Protection Act is overridden, no general code is proposed to govern the arrangements and the circumstances in which the disclosure is to be made are not to be limited in any way. The Bill proposes that databases can be exchanged and data can freely be thrown around without the safeguards of the Data Protection Act or any regard for confidentiality.
	It is said to be a narrow gateway to obtain the information, but the Bill contains powers to extend data matching to other bodies and for purposes beyond those related to crime. Under the Bill, the Home Secretary can expand the scope of the provisions even further. For example, he can do so to assist in the recovery of debts owed to public bodies, such as congestion charges. He can have access to data obtained by public authorities for those purposes. The Home Secretary can add to the list of bodies that may be required to hand over information to the Audit Commission. There is nothing in the Bill to protect the interests of individuals or classes of individuals. I know that we shall hear about the Audit Commission's code of practice that will be put forward, but that is not to be subject to parliamentary approval. Unlike codes such as PACE and so on, there will be no parliamentary approval for the Audit Commission's code of practice in carrying out these things.
	I turn to assets recovery. We know that the Assets Recovery Agency has been a complete failure. It has recovered far less than its cost and is to be abolished. We learnt in a Channel 4 programme the other day that the people employed by SOCA sit there twiddling their thumbs. They have nothing to do. The synergy to which the noble Baroness referred is the synergy of two failed organisations put together. The noble Baroness then has the chutzpah to say that we will save billions of pounds by this means. It is ridiculous. And I have not said anything about Part 1 yet.
	The Select Committee on the Constitution in its report earlier this week said on this Bill:
	"We draw to the attention of the House the fact that the far-reaching restrictions of a SCPO may be placed on a person against whom no criminal proceedings have been instituted or who has been convicted of no criminal offence. Moreover, the restrictions which can be imposed are not limited to conduct forming part of the particular type of crime which has been proved, by civil standards, against the defendant. ASBOs and other types of control order ... generally deal with small-scale anti-social behaviour and have little impact on third parties. SCPOs will have a much wider reach".
	It concluded in this way:
	"A broad question for the House"—
	it is for us—
	"is whether the use of civil orders in an attempt to prevent serious criminal activity is a step too far in the development of preventative orders. Whether or not the trend towards greater use of preventative civil orders is constitutionally legitimate (a matter on which we express doubt), we take the view that SCPOs represent an incursion into the liberty of the subject and constitute a form of punishment that cannot be justified in the absence of a criminal conviction".
	That is what the cross-party Constitution Committee of this House thought of these proposals.
	I have read the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, which I received today. She claims that a recent report in December 2007 by the National Audit Office suggests that ASBOs were highly effective as part of a tiered approach to tackling the overall problem of anti-social behaviour within an area. I do not know where the National Audit Office gets its statistics, since the Home Office does not publish them in full and itself complains that there is under-reporting of ASBOs.
	The British Crime Survey found that 17 per cent of people canvassed perceived a high level of disorder in their local area—the same as the previous year—and that the proportion perceiving young people being drunk had increased. It is constant anti-social behaviour orders: they have been going since 1999 and have shown no marked impact. Meanwhile, according to such Home Office statistics as do exist, 9,253 ASBOs were issued to December 2005, of which 47 per cent were breached and 55 per cent of those breaches resulted in custody. So ASBOs are not the highly effective success that the noble Baroness has claimed. They have not had any impact; all they have done is to have people sent to prison for matters which were not offences.
	That is the template for the serious crime prevention orders that we are now being asked to accept. If you have a case, you should charge, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said. Bail conditions can be imposed just as restrictive as anything proposed under the orders. Where prosecution is too troublesome, trial too long or where you have to rely on rumour, gossip or lifestyle as thrown up by the data-mining provisions to which I preferred, go for what the Minister calls the new tool, the SCPO. It will be a greater failure than ASBOs.
	The imposition of such an order is based on a determination that an individual has done something wrong. It does not have to be proved, except by a civil balance of probabilities. The orders will have an effect on reputation, on people's businesses and on their home lives. The restrictions are deliberately vague. Only examples of restrictions are given in the Bill, so that the order can be flexible. Clause 5(7) states that the restrictions do not need to be stated in the order but are at the discretion of law-enforcement officers, so the police can make their own restrictions. It is not like an ASBO, where the restrictions are told in court to an individual. The restrictions can be imposed by law-enforcement officers themselves.
	Are they proportionate? Can they be challenged? There is no provision for review. All that is relied on is the fact that the orders can, if there is no conviction, be made only by a High Court judge. There is a huge amount of work for High Court judges. Only today, I received a copy of a letter from the Lord Chief Justice about the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill, saying that he did not have enough High Court judges to go around. If the Government proposals go through, if they have their way, the streets will be full of people in red dressing gowns with wigs on running around granting the orders like confetti.
	Everyone has a right to liberty and to security of the person under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Government were good enough to make part of the law of England and Wales and of Scotland. Restrictions on liberty can be justified only by due process of law. Whatever credentials the party which is now in government had for civil liberties have long been lost. Oh God, Mr Blair, it's all over, it's all over.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I welcome the Minister back to her place on the Front Bench after what I understand was her recent bereavement. Certainly the government Front Bench is much the weaker without her.
	I declare an interest as the chair of Justice, an organisation which has submitted a brief for the Second Reading. It is an important declaration because, although I do not speak on behalf of Justice, it is in large part because of my position in that organisation that I have decided to speak today.
	What we have feared for a long time is now happening. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, I shall speak only on Part 1 of the Bill. The noble and learned Lord made an extraordinary speech, virtually every single word of which I agree with. We are now facing the fact that the Government's use of civil penalties as a substitute for criminal convictions will rise to an unacceptable level under the Bill.
	We started with ASBOs in the Crime and Disorder Act 1988. An argument can be made for ASBOs; in effect, they are similar to civil injunctions for harassment or nuisance, which victims could have obtained but they were deterred by costs and the possibility of revenge attacks by the person against whom they sought the injunction. As my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford said, in practice, ASBOs are not working nearly as well as originally expected.
	The Government moved on from ASBOs to control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. We on these Benches accepted, with great reluctance, control orders in principle, although we did not accept the methods by which they are imposed. We accepted them because the aims of modern terrorists include the mass murder of ordinary people, and we see that as a unique case.
	Part 1 pushes the boundaries of civil penalties further still—far too far. Under Clause 1, a serious crime prevention order can be made if the court is satisfied that,
	"a person has been involved in serious crime",
	and the court has reasonable grounds to believe that the order will disrupt future involvement of that person in further serious crime. Does that mean that the person in question must have been previously convicted of a serious crime? Plainly not. Under Clause 2(1)(c), it is enough that the person,
	"has conducted himself in a way that was likely to facilitate the commission by himself or another person of a serious offence in England and Wales (whether or not such an offence was committed)".
	The clause does not even require an intention to facilitate the crime.
	The civil standard of proof applies for an SCPO. So what is a "serious crime", specified in Schedule 1? As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, pointed out, armed robbery is not a specified serious offence, but Schedule 1 includes,
	"fishing for salmon, trout or freshwater fish with prohibited implements".
	It also includes such desperate crimes as,
	"making, importing or distributing an illicit recording".
	That is, of course, a dishonest way of making money but hardly a threat to the public; indeed, many members of the public are all too eager to benefit from that offence. There is also a catch-all provision that allows the court to treat any offence as serious if, in the circumstances of the case, it considers it,
	"to be sufficiently serious to be treated for the purposes of the application or matter as if it were so specified".
	What can be restricted by the order? Under Clause 5, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, pointed out, absolutely anything can be restricted. It includes, just as examples, the persons with whom the subject communicates or associates, the means by which he does so and the premises to which the subject has access. Most surprisingly of all, it includes the place where the subject may live. The subject may be forced into internal exile. It restricts travel, not just abroad but within the United Kingdom. The subject may be required to answer questions from law enforcement officers on any subject. Although that requirement is, in general, subject to the exclusion of answering questions that involve self-incrimination, the exclusion does not apply in one particular case: where officers are investigating a possible breach of an SCPO. The subject of that order must reply, even if the replies would incriminate him in the breach of the order. A breach carries a penalty of up to five years.
	On top of all that, it is far from certain that SCPOs will be effective. As I mentioned, the civil standard of proof applies. I entirely accept, as the noble Baroness pointed out in her letter to the Constitution Committee, that the civil standard is flexible and not always just the simple balance of probabilities. That is clear, for example, from the decision of the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House in the McCann case of 2003. As the Law Society brief points out, in ASBO cases the courts now apply a standard close to the criminal standard. If the same principle applies to SCPOs, however, as clearly it will, their use will be limited to cases where a criminal prosecution would be likely to succeed and in those cases should be used. I know it is not the intention of the Government, but there is an inevitable danger that the prosecution, faced with a case where a criminal conviction is not absolutely certain, will seek a restrictive SCPO as an alternative because there will be a slightly lower standard of proof, no jury and the ability to rely on hearsay evidence.
	Even if SCPOs might work, would they be justified? They impose restrictions on people because of what they may do in the future not what they have done. I recognise that that might be legitimate as part of the sentencing process; that is to say, where there has been sentencing following the commission of a crime. That is part of the reason for imposing longer sentences for re-offenders. But here we have a power to impose restrictions of any kind on people who have not been found guilty of any relevant crime, on the basis of a belief—which, admittedly, must be a reasonable belief—that that person is likely to be involved in future offences which the court considers serious or which are on the list of serious offences. When, in a prosecution, one is looking at the possibility of future conduct, there can never be anything approaching certainty about what that conduct might be. It is not a case of saying, "on the balance of probabilities"; it just has to be a reasonable suspicion.
	What are we doing here? Part 1 is the most authoritarian legislation I have ever seen promulgated in the United Kingdom in peacetime. It is a law worthy of an authoritarian state such as Belarus; it is not worthy of the United Kingdom. Restrictions on liberty as extensive as those possible under the Bill should be applied only on the basis of a criminal conviction. SCPOs are very similar to control orders, the only difference being that they are made by a judge rather than by the Home Secretary and are then judicially reviewed by judges. Control orders were, as I said, introduced to inhibit terrorist mass murder. There is no justification for extending them to the entire criminal justice system, which is what the Bill will do.
	The Government say that all this is okay because SCPOs will be made by judges who will act reasonably; they will be aware of the impact of the Human Rights Act and will apply it. That is true, but it is not an answer. We should not create laws which enlarge the scope for injustice and rely on the judiciary to apply them with moderation. What we want are just laws, not the just application of unjust laws. That would be contrary to the rule of law. Part 1 is, I believe, incompatible with the basic principles of the criminal justice system, which have existed in this country for centuries, and it is incompatible with the rule of law.
	I would like to think that the Minister, who had a very distinguished career at the Bar, is as aware as I am of the fundamental defects of Part 1. It should be removed from the Bill lock, stock and barrel.

Lord Henley: My Lords, I follow other noble Lords in welcoming the Minister back to the Dispatch Box to introduce the Bill. We in this House have certainly missed her. We missed her on the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, which has been taken very ably through the House by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, who is sitting on her right, assisted by, I think, two noble and learned Lords. We probably also missed her on other Bills. However, I suspect that the Home Office has also missed her. By my reckoning, this is probably the 60th piece of Home Office legislation in the past 10 years since new Labour came to power. I understand that there were only 48 pieces of Home Office legislation in the previous 100 years. One suspects that the legal department, or the drafting department, or whatever it is, of the Home Office has been getting bigger and bigger—growing, I suppose, like Topsy. At the same time, I suspect that other departments in the Home Office have suffered reductions; we all know the result of that.
	Furthermore, it is only two years since we had the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. This Bill is called simply the Serious Crime Bill. One really would like to know what the Home Office is up to by introducing quite so many pieces of legislation. Will this, as I suspect quite a lot of the other pieces of legislation did, sound as though it will do a great deal but, in the event, does not achieve much at all? Is it simply the macho posturing of the Home Secretary, or is it mere legislative gesture politics, as I think I have described other pieces of legislation?
	This evening, we get back to the Bill itself, and I shall put several questions to the Minister, which I think she should answer. Many of them have already been asked far more ably by noble Lords from all sides of the House. Here are a few that bear repeating. First, much has been made of ASBOs and of control orders. As my noble friend Lady Anelay made clear, they are simply not working as they should. The Minister is therefore beholden to let us know how she thinks the prevention orders, which deal with serious, organised criminals, will work. Secondly, as several noble Lords have made clear, the burden of proof will be decided, as I understood it, and as I think the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, understood it, on a balance of probabilities. The noble Lord quite rightly intervened to ask the Minister whether that was the case. She said that it was, but that the burden of proof in this case would be much tougher and much nearer to the criminal burden of proof. However, the balance of probabilities in Clause 1(1)(a) and (b) looks just the same as it did, and we need more than just the Minister's assurances to deal with this. Clearly it would be no bad thing to have an amendment to the Bill.
	We also need to address the question asked by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, which arose from his examination of the Bill in the Constitution Committee; namely, what evidence would be allowed to go before the High Court in these cases, and would, for example, hearsay evidence be admitted on these occasions, if I understood the noble Viscount, in the way that it would not in a criminal case?
	I turn to the list of offences in Schedule 1. A number of noble Lords quite rightly made light of them and I would probably want to do so. Does the noble Baroness remember the seminal Mel Brooks film "Blazing Saddles"? The chief bad guy, when persuading his gang of hoodlums to attack some small, benighted town lists all the offences they are supposed to commit: murder, rape and arson, and on he goes. If this Bill had been passed and he was listing all the crimes they had to commit, he would have to add fishing for salmon, trout and freshwater fish with prohibited implements. It seems extraordinary. To treat it slightly more seriously, as the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, did, how do you to explain to the man in the street or the man on the Clapham omnibus what a serious crime is when you have included fishing but not, as my noble friend made clear, armed robbery? All of us see that as a serious crime and certainly one that serious, organised criminals get involved with.
	Four pages of the Bill are devoted to Schedule 1 and the same four pages are repeated for Northern Ireland. That seems completely unnecessary because under Clause 2(2)(b) the judge can then add whatever he wants, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. The list in Schedule 1 is therefore not necessary because the judge can decide what will be a serious crime if it is not listed. The noble Baroness ought to assist us—we will certainly assist her in Committee—to bring further light to this extraordinary list.
	Clause 5 deals with the type of provision that may be made by orders. Clause 5(1) refers to the type of provision but adds that it does not limit the type of provision that may be made by such an order. Again, it seems that there is no limit to what the judge can do. I suspect that those like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, who have served as judges would agree with me when I say that these are not things that would be right and proper for a judge to decide, just as it is probably not right or proper that a judge should decide exactly what is a serious crime when he cannot find it in Schedule 1.
	I turn to less controversial parts of the Bill. Part 2 deals with encouraging or assisting crime. The Minister made it quite clear that this was largely in response to Law Commission recommendations. She admitted that they are complex and technical and agreed that they would need careful examination, I think she is right. She said she looked forward to exploring this in detail and so do we. As my noble friend made clear, we particularly want to expose and explore those areas in Part 2 where what the Government have included is different from what the Law Commission recommended. It is important that we look at that matter in detail at the Committee stage.
	I turn to Part 3 and what my noble friend described as the very sweeping changes it makes to our data protection laws. This needs very careful examination. My noble friend Lord Lucas referred to the need to collect yet more information. I think I ought to warn him that if yet more was collected, particularly by the Home Office, we really do not know what would happen to it, because we know what has happened to a great deal of other information that has been passed on. There are certainly some very worrying aspects to all this, particularly in relation to data sharing between different agencies, both public and private; in other words, the ability to look at the details of one's credit cards, store loyalty cards or whatever to try to find patterns that might indicate criminality. We want to look at certain things, but we will enter that process with an open mind, as my noble friend said.
	The last part of the Bill on which I want to comment is Chapter 3 in Part 3. The noble Baroness will remember that Clause 75 which is, in effect, Chapter 3, relates to the extension of powers of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I am always very alarmed when I see any extension being granted to HM Revenue and Customs. We know that Revenue and Customs has always had very excessive powers and probably still does. However, I am grateful for the assurance from the noble Baroness that the new powers may be used only for the investigation of serious crime. As I said, bearing in mind the already very extensive powers that HMRC has, we would certainly wish to explore that matter further.
	I do not wish to be negative about the Bill and I hope I have not been. I end with a brief suggestion about how the Bill can be improved and what we can do to assist further the appropriate authorities in the fight against crime. I ask the noble Baroness to take note of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said. He seeks to improve the rules of criminal evidence by allowing evidence obtained by the use of phone tapping and other electronic surveillance to be admissible in court. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will seriously consider tabling amendments about that. If he does, we shall certainly support them, and if he does not, we would be willing to table them ourselves. I hope that in advance of the Committee stage the noble Baroness will give some indication that she will be able to accept such amendments.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their participation in the debate. I thank most warmly the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and others who have expressed such kindness about my current position. Many have written to me and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for joining in that kindness. At one stage, I thought that the expression of condolences was just to see whether the House could do that which it has never achieved before: to make me cry at the Dispatch Box.
	I also thank those who have supported the ethos and the purpose of the Bill, even if not all have wholeheartedly supported the way in which it has been done. Some of the barbed support will certainly be taken on board. I thank, in particular, my noble friend Lady Gibson of Market Rasen and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for his support in relation to data sharing.
	I understand the anxiety expressed about ensuring that the provisions to address these very serious offences are proportionate and fair. I take on board the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, that law has to be just, as well as being justly applied. Those issues are very important indeed. I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Dear, because he encapsulated so beautifully the danger that is posed to us and to our communities by serious, organised criminals who undertake their pernicious crimes with a sense of arrogance, disregard and wholesale criminality in a way that is very shocking indeed. Our need to grapple with those issues cannot be underestimated and I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving us such clear examples as to why that is so.
	I also take very seriously the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Goodhart, among others, about the need to get this right. That cannot be underemphasised. I particularly want to say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, that this issue does not just affect us in the United Kingdom. Regrettably, serious crime has become an international business. These are multi-national criminals who often carry out their pernicious practices in many jurisdictions. Therefore, the need to understand comity and how we promote effectiveness and appropriate measures is absolutely critical.
	I do not share with some noble Lords the belief that ASBOs, for instance, have been unsuccessful. I know that that view was initially expressed by the Liberal Democrat Benches, but I have had the joy of seeing a Damascene-like conversion: many Liberal Democrats have now joined to support the efficacy of anti-social behaviour orders if appropriately and proportionately used. I understand entirely the need for that.
	That is why I want to remind the House that we have put certain stringent boulders in the way of inappropriate use of these orders. These are not orders which we think will be used on a wholesale basis, but orders which will capable of being used very judiciously. That is why it is not the general Crown Prosecution Service which will be empowered to ask for these orders. Only three prosecuting authorities will have the ability so to do. I hope that the House will accept that the three identified are they who are charged on our behalf with dealing with the most serious offences. The evidential burden that will need to be discharged will rightly be heavy.
	I thank those who have acknowledged the sliding scale in relation to the balance of probabilities. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, correctly referred the House to the McCann case in 2003 which set the standard very clearly for those who thought that it might, as time has passed, have come in doubt. It reaffirmed that he who asserts must prove and if the assertion is of a serious nature one has to produce commensurate evidence to discharge that balance of probability. In the most serious issues, quite often the distinction between the criminal standard and the civil standard will be negligible.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the reason that the civil test is the appropriate one is that there may be different factors which will need a different level of proof. The noble and learned Lord will know well that we are—I do not hesitate to say—blessed with some of the best judges that the world has on offer. Our judges are very used, as the noble and learned Lord will know from his own experience, to making that judicious balance as to which factors need to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, which factors need a heavy burden of probability before the court would be capable of being satisfied about it and which factors can be safely used to a lesser burden. Overall, the court will take into account the different parts of the evidence and in the end have to judge whether the totality of the evidence produced reaches the commensurate standard with the assertion which has been maintained by the party so that it is discharged. That has proved over time to be an extraordinarily flexible and accurate tool for those properly trained to employ it. My noble friend Lady Gibson is therefore right about training. Noble Lords will know that particularly now with the Judicial Studies Board, every time we have a new piece of legislation we can ensure that there is appropriate training not only by legal practitioners but also by the judiciary in how to respond. I can assure her on that important matter.
	I shall now concentrate my remarks on Part 1 because it has excited the most concern in the debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for the way in which she approached even Part 1, and because both she and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, along with a number of other noble Lords, have made it relatively clear that there is less concern about Parts 2 and 3 although there are issues related to data sharing and the operation of the Data Protection Act. The nature and specificity of the offences covered by Part 1 are important. I was tempted to rise during the debate to try better to explain the fishing example, but I confess that I was so enjoying the enjoyment of noble Lords in making their case that I hesitated to do so until it was my time to speak.
	We have some serious environmental issues to tackle in relation to the inappropriate fishing of endangered species. They are fished on a wholesale basis for gain. It is a serious crime which damages both our fishing industry and that of Europe, and it is something we are obliged to address with an appropriate degree of seriousness. There is also the problem of dumping at sea, a form of pollution which has environmental consequences. These are serious crime targets that we are seeking to deal with in this Bill.
	Certain cases are systemic while other serious offences are one-offs. We are looking at things that happen repeatedly. I also want to reassure the House that we are clear that if serious crime is identified, it should be investigated, prosecuted and the perpetrators brought to trial wherever possible. This part of the Bill looks at prevention once patterns of serious crime have been established. It looks at how to prevent those who have been so identified continuing those patterns of behaviour. I anticipate that we will spend some time in Committee dealing with how to establish and define serious crime, what is its nature, its quantum and its continuity, and I understand why the House has identified this as an issue. Bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Dear, described so graphically, I hope that together we will be able first to come to a common understanding and then to craft something with which noble Lords will at least feel content.
	During the debate I have encountered some issues that are old friends. One of the oldest of these is intercept. The issue has now become very dear to me. I cannot but see the noble and learned Lord in his place to know that any debate at any time on any day on any issue should have intercept woven somewhere into its fabric. If it were not, I would be deeply disappointed. The same is true of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, and I hold the issue of gun crime in the same degree of affection given the debates that we have enjoyed over time. Indeed, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for sending his bouquet in relation to my answers. It is a rare bouquet; I acknowledge it and I am grateful for it. We have canvassed the issue on a number of occasions. We understand what the noble Lord intends to present but I anticipate that we may come to a similar conclusion.
	I understand why the issue of intercept has been raised again, and the noble and learned Lord will know that it has remained under active consideration. The issue has not been resolved but, as he and other noble Lords will know, that has not been as a result of a lack of energy. There are difficult and complex points to be resolved. I reiterate that if it could be safely used, the Government would have no objection in principle. We have not yet found a way of using it safely but that does not mean that we will not continue to look at the issue.
	Once it has been established that a crime has been committed, we have the possibility of using the orders on a preventive basis. We believe that if they could be used judiciously, appropriately and in a restrained way, it would inure to our advantage and not our disadvantage.
	I am conscious that I have about seven minutes in which to cover Parts 2 and 3. Therefore, if I may, I shall deal more briefly with the other issues raised. I hear with absolute clarity the concerns about mining for information. As I said in opening, the data protection provisions will remain. We were very anxious about the concerns expressed by the Information Commissioner, whose role is to scrutinise issues and to ensure compliance and that he is consulted. We have continued that consultation and are relatively assured that what is proposed in the Bill does not trespass inappropriately on the data protection provisions.
	I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we are actively discussing with the commissioner the concerns which he expressed about scrutiny. We are already working with the Information Commissioner at official and ministerial level. As the provisions are enabling powers, the Information Commissioner's role in them has still to be decided. However, we are committed to creating a transparent, proportionate and fair system which ensures that the right people receive the benefits and services that the provisions are intended to create. As noble Lords will be aware, the Data Protection Act already allows us to deal slightly differently with data for criminal and other purposes. Nothing that we propose in the Bill will trespass against those principles. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, raised extensive queries about what that will mean and how we will take it forward. Although I should like to give him a very detailed response, I know from the sheaves of paper in my hand and what is in my head that that may take some little time. We now have notice of all the issues which the House would most like to have answered. I can promise noble Lords that, in Committee, we will bear all those in mind and seek to address them. I thank noble Lords for indicating their concerns now so that we can bear them very much in mind when responding to any amendments.
	The tax provisions are very similar to those that already exist. We have transposed the existing provisions into the new provisions in a way that we think is proportionate and temperate.
	Before leaving this whole debate, I should like to say that I know that many disobliging comments have been made about the Assets Recovery Agency. With regard to its performance, we need to bear a number of issues in mind. First, it was a new agency. Secondly, the methods it was using to collect assets were complex and untested, and were challenged in the courts. That has reduced the speed with which it was able to work at the inception of the process. The agency has actually been successful, and has defeated all those challenges. As a result, the courts have been able to define what the agency can and cannot do, and what the process is. We have found in the past year that performance has speeded up considerably. This has been the most successful year so far. We anticipate that the outstanding claims, which were taking longer because of that process, will now come through.
	I understand the anxieties in what has been said, but I also believe that had SOCA been in existence before we created the Assets Recovery Agency, we would probably have had one agency. I agree with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that this is a sensible move. SOCA is a very impressive organisation, and we are hopeful that the amalgamation of the two agencies will greatly accelerate our ability to asset-manage.
	I know that I have not dealt with each and every issue raised seriatim, but I assure your Lordships that I intend to answer fully when we come to debate this in Committee. I thank the House for its kindness to me and its welcome back, notwithstanding the nature of the Bill I have to propose.
	On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, in moving this Motion I shall also speak to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2006, which are the main regulations that we are now going to debate.
	At last we have the WEEE regulations, seven years after the European Commission first proposed the directive, four years after the directive was agreed and with an implementation date that is some two years late. I welcome them like I welcomed getting to Kings Cross station when I came down on Monday and we were four hours late due to problems on the line: it was good to be there, but one wondered why we had not got there quite a lot earlier. Nevertheless, we need to put down some markers for the future because these are complex regulations and it is not at all clear that they are going to operate smoothly in practice. Today's debate is perhaps a small first step in that direction.
	The Government are up before the European Court for what is called an infraction. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that in his reply.
	What I thought would be a fairly modest and mild debate was the subject of a vituperative Tory press release yesterday. I was denounced by a man called Alan Duncan; I had not heard of him before, but he is some bigwig in the Tory party nowadays. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, will have a word and tell him how we do things here. This kind of debate is a useful, low-key, not very political way of scrutinising European legislation.
	The regulations, which deal with the disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment, inevitably bring a new collection of acronyms. There are designated collection facilities—DCFs—where people will be able to take and dispose of their waste electrical and electronic equipment. There are approved authorised treatment facilities—AATFs—where the equipment will be treated, recovered or recycled rather than being put in landfill. Producer compliance schemes—PCSs—are systems the producers will use to organise this. There is the difficult question of individual producer responsibility, which I shall deal with in a moment, and various others.
	The Explanatory Memorandum sets out clearly in paragraph 4.1 what the regulations are for, based on the directive. It says:
	"These Regulations implement the main provisions of the Directive by introducing a waste management for WEEE in the United Kingdom that is intended to: (a) minimise the disposal of WEEE as unsorted municipal waste by establishing a network of designated collection facilities in the United Kingdom; (b) ensure that all WEEE from private households that is collected at such designated collection facilities is sent for treatment, recovery or recycling to authorised treatment facilities or exporters that are approved under these Regulations; (c) achieve the recovery targets set out in the Directive; and (d) provide that producers of EEE are registered and that they are responsible for financing the costs of managing the waste that arises from EEE in each compliance period".
	This is, on the face of it, a sensible way of going about things. It is, however, an extremely complex scheme. I pay tribute to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, whose seventh report of the current Session is extremely useful and informative and will help people understand how we hope the regulations will work. A minor advance in House of Lords procedure took place during the Merits Committee. It was the first time the committee had taken oral evidence, which it took from three members of DTI staff. There has been talk of revolution this afternoon in your Lordships' House, but one of the things I have learnt since I have been here is that a lot of the useful advances and changes that take place are evolutionary. There has been a slight but important advance in the way in which we scrutinise legislation.
	Who is to blame for the delays? It would be easy for me to stand here and blame it all on the Government. I am not going to do that, although I think that mistakes were made in the early years. A lot of the blame has been associated with the requirement for individual producer responsibility—IPR. The European directive requires that this should be included in the legislation, but it is not because it has been discovered that it is technically impossible to do. It is almost certainly not being done anywhere else in Europe either. It is interesting that this was a result of the co-decision process—the negotiations between the Parliament and the Council—and the Parliament got the upper hand and insisted on individual producer responsibility. There are lessons here for all of us as politicians that high principles are fine but unless you work out how they will be carried out, they will not work and you will end up with a lot of delay and angst.
	My main concern about how these regulations are going to work is based at what is called the consumer level—the household level, at which individual people are throwing out this kind of equipment. The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee had a long discussion about toasters—and the fact that the committee chose to have a long discussion about toasters from all the items of electrical or electronic equipment really says something about the Members of the House of Lords. A group of 25 year-olds having the same discussion would talk about iPods, not toasters.
	Schedule 1 of the regulations sets out 10 categories, and it lists lots of items within those 10 categories which range from large household appliances and big white goods such as fridges, freezers, cookers and so on; small household appliances; IT; consumer equipment, including TVs, radios and video recorders; toys; lighting equipment; and tools—anything at all that is powered by electricity up to 1,000 volts. What are people going to do under this new regime when they want to throw something out? Is anything significant going to change?
	In the very interesting evidence given to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, Mr Tony Pedrotti said:
	"The consumer—you and me when we get rid of our waste electrical equipment—is going to be carrying on doing roughly what we do now".
	If we are all going to carry on doing roughly what we are doing now, is this actually a major step forward? I question whether that is the case.
	People can take large items to designated collection facilities, which will be civic amenity sites or waste disposal depots; they can have them removed by people coming to install new equipment, but they may have to pay for that; or they can take it to a shop where they are buying a new item as long as it is the same kind of item—and under the new rules that shop may take it for free, or it may not. The shop may say that the customer has to go to the designated collection facility and, if that is three or four or 10 miles away, the item may go in the bin instead.
	Most small items are, frankly, still going to go in the wheelie bin. Toasters, kettles, clocks, CD players, mobile phones, iPods, little computers, toys, radios, electric whisks and electric toothbrushes will all go in the bin—even light bulbs. A curious thing about the regulations is that they will cover modern low-energy light bulbs but not the traditional filament light bulbs. The Minister may want to comment on that.
	Why does the legislation not include the collection authorities at local level? Why does it not include the district councils, which collect the rubbish, and not only the people who dispose of it? Councils could do this work as part of their general recycling work, which is pervasive throughout the country. Most people nowadays are asked to separate the recyclable stuff from the general stuff; in many cases, people are asked to separate the recyclable stuff into three or four different streams. Why on Earth is WEEE stuff not included in that system? If we are serious about increasing considerably the quantities recycled, that is the way we should go. It is said that on average we throw away 14 kilograms a year and the target is only 4 kilograms—and we are achieving that already. It seems to me that the fundamental fault in these regulations lies at the district council level. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on this matter and that he will at least say whether it will be looked at as part of the review, which I understand will take place fairly soon.
	We should wave through these regulations but they are going to run and run. There is talk in the Merits Committee of a review and a report to Parliament. We all hope that the measure works and that everyone involved will make a success of it—what the Minister might call stakeholders, but I do not. How long will it be before the scheme is assessed and evaluated so that we know how much of a success it has been? Will it be one year or five years? I offer the hope that when that evaluation takes place we shall have a further debate in Parliament to consider whether this legislation has succeeded or failed and what might be done to improve it. I beg to move.
	Moved, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations laid before the House on 15 December 2006 be annulled (SI 2006/3315) 7th report from the Merits Committee.—(Lord Greaves.)

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, clearly established what this legislation is all about. Curiously enough, I am more interested in the process behind the measure than in its implementation, but we should be aware of what we are talking about. I am told that people in this country throw away 5 million television sets, 2 million home computers and 8,000 tonnes of battery operated toys per annum. Since 2003, we have generated 3 million tonnes of electrical equipment waste. That is a huge problem. If it does not indicate what we are dealing with and why we need these regulations, nothing will.
	I am interested in the process behind the measure. It seems that the Government's reaction to a European directive is that it is an act of God: there is an almighty flash of inspiration, the European Commission—in this case, God—comes up with a directive and the Government are totally surprised. However, that is not the situation at all. These directives do not come from above in a flash of lighting; they are the product of years of negotiation, in which our own negotiators play a very active role. If the negotiators and the Government have talked to each other—I assume that that happens—one might think that we and the Government would be ready to start doing something about a directive when it arrived, instead of being taken by surprise and spending two more years talking about it.
	There was a classic example of such an approach the other day, when my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, replied to my question on batteries. His answer was absolutely out of this world; he completely gave the game away. "Ah, my Lords", he said, "the answer to that is that we have a directive coming". The real question is: if a directive is coming and we know that there is a problem about which we ought to do something, could we not start to act without the directive? That is neither here nor there, but one wonders about the process in those circumstances.
	This area is particularly difficult, and I acknowledge the Government's problems with it, particularly the liability of individual producers. As the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee pointed out, nobody has yet overcome that difficulty effectively. I suspect that a review may conclude that we have to wriggle round that provision or get rid of it. That is just a part of the problem of dealing with this matter but it does not excuse the delay.
	Getting rid of computers is very difficult. When you throw out a computer, it still contains all the information stored on it. Unless you take a seven-pound hammer to it and smash it into pieces so small that no one would take the trouble to do anything about it, you could be throwing away the records of your family finances, allowing access to credit cards and so on. It could be dangerous if the computer fell into the wrong hands.
	I know a firm in north London that makes a good business out of taking old computers, for nothing, and sweeping them until they are clean. Microsoft has given the firm permission to reinstall a somewhat dated programme, and the computers are sent into the community: to old people who want a computer, old people's homes, hospitals and anywhere people may want the private use of a computer. The firm also trains people in computer use and so on and provides a wonderful service. I am not sure how that fits into these regulations, but computer recovery is a much better business than computer dumping. I agree that television sets cannot be recovered in that way, still less the proverbially difficult toasters, but there are other ways of dealing with aspects of this problem.
	Although I sympathise with the Government about the difficulties in these regulations, if we were awarding points on performance, we might give a high mark for artistic impression but a very low mark for execution, because we should have been at this point two years ago. That is a criticism. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has pointed out, this debate is part of the process of examining how we arrive at European directives. If there is a lesson to learn from what has happened in the infraction proceedings that have commenced, it is that we ought to take much more notice of what our negotiators are doing in Brussels so that we are not as ill prepared as we clearly have been when directives arrive from on high in a flash of lightning and take us all by surprise.

Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing this debate on these regulations. They will not come into force until July this year; that is two years late, but this is a case of "worse late than never". Late as they are, these regulations remain fraught with potential problems, as the 7th Report of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred, makes clear.
	That report and evidence are studded with qualifications and useful words such as "challenging", which is Defra-speak meaning that not only will it not happen but there will be a giant cock-up. In his evidence, Mr Pedrotti, the spokesman for the DTI, made his frustration clear when he stated,
	"the most difficult part was where people signed up to the Directive who did not understand what it actually means in practice".
	I guess that if you do that it makes it quite challenging to implement. Mr Pedrotti went further: talking about individual producer responsibility (IPR) he said that it "has proved technically impossible". I will not go further into the shortcomings of these regulations, because the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith have dealt with them well.
	Rather like my noble friend, I wish to examine the process, but from a different angle. What are we really doing in this House, passing this dog's breakfast of legislation into law? We are obeying the diktat handed down by the Commission and the comitology process in Brussels. It is what Ministers like to call "fulfilling our treaty obligations". That is all too painfully true. I am sure that your Lordships do not need reminding that neither this House nor the elected Chamber has any standing whatever when it comes to dealing with EU legislation. Witness this evening's debate: we may criticise, complain, make suggestions and pick holes in the whole process, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has done tonight, but it will not make any difference at all, I am sorry to say. We must, in the immortal words of Sir Con O'Neill,
	"swallow the lot, and swallow it now".
	The noble Lord will not be able to call a vote on his Prayer, and I wonder whether we might all be better employed doing a crossword or a sudoku puzzle than standing here this evening.
	That applies to every single regulation and directive that comes out of Brussels, more than 100,000 pages of law in the past 10 years, all of which have been passed into British law without Parliament having any input whatever. Ninety per cent of those regulations and directives are nothing but an unnecessary burden on the UK economy, whether it is the horse passport directive, the water framework directive, the landfill directive, the working at height directive, the vibrations directive or—a matter on which I asked a Question the other day—the financial services action plan. They are all a burden on the British economy. They add unnecessary costs and complications to our national life.
	An excellent example of this were the curd cheese regulations, on which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was kind enough to support me about a month ago. It was manifestly unfair legislation, which bankrupted a successful small business. It would never have been railroaded through Parliament if Parliament had been responsible for introducing these sorts of regulations. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, admitted, this was an EU competence; we had no choice but to swallow the lot and swallow it whole.
	The German Parliament has recognised that 84 per cent of its laws now emanate from Brussels. Its Leader has openly questioned whether German democratic government can be said to be functional if so much law is passed through the Parliament without it being able to do anything about it. If Germany admits to 84 per cent of its laws coming from Brussels, can we be very far behind? Let us say that 78 per cent of legislation enacted by Parliament here comes from Brussels, for which we are merely a rubber stamp. There seems to be a general passive acceptance of this frankly extraordinary situation, where a democratically elected House and its second Chamber can only wave through without amendment 70 per cent of the legislation that comes before it.
	I was interested to see in the report of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee that my noble friend Lord Jopling, who was a member of the committee, had a bit of a go at this, although from a different angle. He asked Mr Pedrotti of the DTI, who was giving evidence:
	"Do you think it would be a good idea to tell the department that for future pieces of secondary legislation many people in Parliament resent orders which are laid on the brink of a recess to come into effect whilst Parliament is still in recess?"
	Mr Pedrotti agreed that that was wrong; but I am afraid that I have news for my noble friend Lord Jopling: his point was purely procedural; it would not have made the slightest difference because it was EU legislation.
	Surely we are a grown-up country and should be capable of enacting all our legislation where it is necessary to do so. We are told that we are the oldest democracy and the fifth largest economy in the world. We should be capable of running our own show. We do not need the EU to tell us how to dispose of our electrical waste. If Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and America can do so, why cannot we?
	I suggest that it is time to examine the role that Parliament plays and the way that it deals—or, rather, does not deal—with EU legislation. Parliament should have the right to amend or reject all EU legislation, or perhaps we should just stop signing the cheques.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, this has been a short but interesting debate on a difficult issue. The difficulties have been eloquently expressed by noble Lords who contributed to the debate. In the few minutes that I take to respond, I hope to answer and touch on many of the matters raised, but if I fail to do that, I will write.
	I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke. I have to leave aside the noble Lord's views on Brussels, but the Government's view is that this is important environmental legislation that seeks to address in a practical and environmentally effective manner the increasing levels of waste electrical and electronic equipment—I refuse to use the acronym WEEE—within the European Union. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, quoted a figure of 1.8 million tonnes and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, gave graphic examples of what is being thrown away. Government figures are that last year 2 million tonnes of waste of this kind were generated in the UK. That figure is absolutely enormous, and imaginative and brilliant solutions are needed to solve the problem.
	The regulations place obligations on all producers of electrical and electronic equipment to finance the costs of the waste management of the products they place on the UK market. The range of products covered by the regulations is extensive and runs to a full foolscap page in one of the documents. It includes washing machines, mobile phones and all sort of things, including specialist equipment such as ventilators, dialysis machines and, in some cases, laboratory measuring equipment.
	We had extensive consultations, and the business community as a whole supports the aims of the regulations and the need to limit the environmental impact of their products when they reach their end of life. As of this morning, the environmental agencies have received 37 applications from prospective compliance schemes that will help producers to meet their obligations. That is a real demonstration of the commitment within the producer community.
	In drawing up the regulations it was agreed, following consultation with interested organisations and their representatives—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that I managed to remove all references to "stakeholders" in my final speech, so they will be "interested organisations" rather than "stakeholders"— that the Government should bring forward separate regulations that cover the main obligations and necessary infrastructure and separate regulations in relation to the treatment requirements, which are focused on the waste management and treatment sector. There are three sets of permitting regulations, which amend the existing waste treatment licensing regimes in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
	The main WEEE regulations—SI 3289—aim to introduce producer responsibility in a practical and cost-effective manner for producers and distributors in the UK. Although the bulk of the obligations rest with the producers of electrical and electronic equipment, the distributors of such equipment also have obligations. When a replacement item of EEE is purchased, distributors must provide facilities for consumers to return their equipment when it reaches the end of its life. That can be done in one of two ways. They can either offer services to take back the equipment on to their premises when a replacement piece of equipment is purchased, or they can join the Distributor Take-back Scheme, which will help them discharge their obligations. Distributors have offered funding of £10 million, via the Distributor Take-back Scheme, to local authorities for the use of their sites and to finance any upgrading, signage and so on, which may be needed.
	The WEEE regulations place no new direct obligations on local authorities regarding waste collection; for example, current arrangements for bulky waste collections from households will be unaffected. However, local authorities are obligated under other waste management regulations to accept from households all types of household waste, including waste electrical and electronic equipment. Under the range of regulations they are also required to arrange the environmentally sound disposal of any such waste. They are not, however, obligated to separately collect WEEE or arrange the treatment in line with the targets within the WEEE regulations.
	The involvement of local authorities will help to establish the robust infrastructure needed to produce an efficient and effective system under the regulations. By working with the Distributor Take-back Scheme, local authorities will be able to reduce their financial obligations under other waste management regulations. For example, producer compliance schemes will provide all containers for the separate collection of WEEE; producer compliance schemes will finance the collection, treatment and reprocessing of all separately collected household WEEE; local authorities may be able to count the recycling of WEEE deposited at their sites and collected by producer compliance schemes towards their recycling targets; and, by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill, they will be able to reduce their landfill costs. In view of these benefits, we are absolutely confident that the vast majority of local authorities will wish to sign up their civic amenity sites as designated collection facilities.
	As noble Lords have noted, the implementation of the directive in the UK has not been without its problems. The evidence given to the Merits Committee, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, was straightforward, upfront and clear. Civil servants should be congratulated on that. While we are confident that the requirements for collective responsibility of waste can be fully implemented, Article 8.2 of the directive introduces the principle, which we have heard about, of individual producer responsibility—IPR—which provides for each producer to be responsible for financing the cost of waste from their own products placed on the market after 13 August 2005.
	The Government fully support the concept of IPR in principle; we have, for example, implemented the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive on the basis of own-marque responsibility for vehicle manufacturers. We have, however, taken the view that IPR for WEEE is neither technically feasible nor economically viable at present. It would require systems to be in place to allow for the identification of each producer's own waste products. Such systems have not been introduced in any other member state, and the European Commission is well aware of the difficulties being experienced in implementing that requirement.
	However, the regulations before us require all producer-compliance schemes to put forward, by the end of 2007, their suggestions and ideas for how IPR can be achieved. In addition, the DTI will be working with producers to develop a process for sharing good practice to help in developing an effective solution.
	The main costs of implementing the WEEE regulations are the separate collection, treatment and recycling of WEEE required under the directive. The DTI's regulatory impact assessment estimates annualised costs in the region of £200 million to £300 million, but this estimate assumes that virtually all WEEE arising in the UK will be separately collected. However, we anticipate that these costs will fall over time as new treatment technologies develop and as recycling markets for materials deriving from WEEE grow.
	The UK's WEEE regulations implement the WEEE directive with as light a regulatory touch as possible, allowing a competitive market to develop in which producers can discharge their responsibilities under the directive. It is regrettable that delay in implementing the regulations has resulted in the UK missing the Commission's deadline for transposition and implementation. As we know, the Commission has commenced infraction proceedings as a result, and judgment is expected shortly.
	The diverse nature of the business community directly affected by the regulations resulted in the identification of a range of difficulties as the directive was transposed into UK law. The complexity of the base directive added to these difficulties in transposition and implementation. But, as I said, we are not alone in those difficulties. The majority of member states have had difficulties. Of the 24 member states, 18 were not able to complete transposition within the directive's timescale and 13 of those were unable to meet the implementation deadline. One member state is still to transpose and implement.
	In the process of developing the implementation policy, the Government recognised the importance of engaging with producers, distributors, local authorities and the waste management sector to develop the necessary infrastructure behind the regulations to provide an effective WEEE system in the UK. We are confident that the regulations will not only result in a robust infrastructure for the handling of WEEE but represent practical solutions to the issues faced.
	I shall quickly deal with some of the questions raised by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was very interested in light bulbs and asked why ordinary light bulbs were not covered by the directive. The directive focuses on bulbs that contain hazardous materials. That is seen as a priority. It is entirely possible that the directive may cover filament bulbs in future. The UK will discuss that with the Commission during the review. The noble Lord also asked when the guidance would be issued. It is being finalised now and, he will be happy to hear, it will be available by the end of the month. He asks whether this is a major step forward. We feel that it is, as under WEEE regulations, WEEE will be taken out of the municipal waste stream and treated in an environmentally sound way. At the moment, it goes straight into landfill untreated, causing environmental damage.
	Importantly, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, also wants to know what the UK is doing to review regulations. The European Commission review starts in 2008, and the UK will participate fully. The UK will monitor the situation in the UK very closely. The first full year of the review will be 2008, and 2009 will be the earliest that we can look at the WEEE system.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked some very interesting questions. I do not have the answers to all of them, but I found extremely interesting the question about the digital switchover and the number of televisions that will go into recycling as a result. Not all existing TVs will be made redundant by the digital switchover. Those that are will be disposed of in the UK system, which has adequate capacity to deal effectively with television sets and radios.
	As I said, I am very grateful to everyone for contributing to this short debate. I am aware that a number of questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, have not been answered, and I undertake to answer them as quickly as possible.